Description of Related Art
The game of baseball has now become beyond question the leading feature of the outdoor sports of the United States and even other foreign countries. Enthusiastic fans of a particular team may go to ballparks to enjoy the game, while fans may stay home or go to sports cafés or bars to watch the game broadcasted via cable television, satellite, or network such as the Internet. Some may love to see his favorite player hit a home run and feel great when seeing his favorite pitcher take a strikeout from a slugger of the opponent team.
From the aspect of the baseball business, very successful scenarios are to keep attracting many fans continuously. One game of the baseball generally takes time around two or three hours, and if the spectators and televiewers of the game keep attention to the entire game period, the commercial value of the game is much more raised. When the game is tight, the spectators and televiewers likely keep interests on the game, but when the game is of a blow-out for one team, people, particularly fans for the team unlikely coming back, may not keep watching the game until the end of the game. In some cases, a person watches the game simply because his closely associated person is watching the game, and motivation to keep watching the game in such a case may tend to decrease as the game innings proceeds further due to viewer's boring.
In a meantime, the game of bingo is frequently used in such as parties and other situation for entertaining guests and participants. To play the game of bingo, each player is provided with a card or sheet typically including a matrix of five rows and five columns defining twenty-five grid squares. Each grid square contains a single game symbol typically representing a number in the range of 1 to 75. No number in the different grid squares is the same, and the middle grid square in the third row and the third column typically contains no number traditionally referred to as the “free square.” As the game proceeds, numbers are drawn, and each player places marks on the drawn numbers by punching out portions of the numbers along the perforation around the corresponding numbers. When at least one straight line of the gird squares is covered by the marked numbers, a winner may be declared to award the prize. In a certain gaming way, two or more lines may give a greater prize to the winner.
As modified bingo games, games have been known to played in conjunction with on-going competitive athletic event. In U.S. Pat. No. 4,883,636 a baseball bingo-type game is disclosed which uses a conventional pre-printed bingo playing card having nine rows which represent nine innings of a baseball game for a visiting team and nine columns which represent the same nine innings for a home team. Each resulting square in the nine-by-nine matrix is pre-printed with a baseball play. When a play on a given space is made by a player on either the home or visiting team, it is covered with a chip or marker by the contestant. As with all conventional bingo games, a winning contestant is determined when a predetermined pattern of zones or spaces is covered by markers (e.g., all the zones in a row, column, or diagonal). This game is not satisfactory for various reasons. For example, if a winner is decided by coverage of all nine zones in a row, column, or diagonal, and if such coverage ends midway, the player likely loses interests in continuing the bingo game after the coverage ends. To place markings on the card properly, the player has to pay attention to the inning number as well as the top or bottom, and if the player places the marking in a wrong zone by mistakenly identifying whether the current event is in the top or the bottom, the entire game of bingo becomes useless, and this may provide negative effects on enjoyments on the baseball game.